


Jacob will be home any minute now.

by Skyplayer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Clocks, Horror, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 10:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27469342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyplayer/pseuds/Skyplayer
Summary: Why isn't he back yet?
Kudos: 4





	Jacob will be home any minute now.

Jacob was supposed to be back by now.

I sit here on the leather couch, the glossy surface lit only faintly by the single flickering candle that sits upon the coffee table. 

I stare at the grandfather clock. It ignorantly performs its duty, each tick a thundering bang that reverberates through the cavernous sitting room.

Why isn't he back yet?  
  
My nails dig into my thighs leaving long red scratches. My teeth grit and my lip trembles. I'm crying now. I don't know when I started crying. I never take my eyes off the clock.

The leaking begins at first on the edge of the face. A dark liquid oozing around the outer cusp. Gradually it seeps down, enveloping the numerals into its maw, drenching the pendulum with a sickly red mucus. Back and forth it swings, splashing the innards of the mechanism until the glass is opaque with that same repulsive hue. 

Any moment now Jacob will walk through that door and all will be fine again, our happy little life perfectly intact. Where is he?

It's not like him to leave me waiting this long. He is infamously punctual with his arrangements. 

Yet still my eyes do not wander from the bloodied clock. There I stay, watching the grim fountain as if it were a television program, as if this were any regular night. It's fascinating really, the way the trails trickling down the wood separate and mingle and merge, like a system of rivers or the tears on my cheeks or a reflection of the veins and arteries they once inhabited.

It's when the clock strikes the top of the hour that I finally lose my confidence. Jacob isn't coming home. Jacob is never coming home. The crimson minute hand reaches its peak, setting in motion the deafening bells. I could swear I see the damn thing move, the slightest wobble, and I can no longer keep up the lie. I dive at the clock, bringing it crashing to the floor.

Shards of glass, as sharp as knives, embed themselves into the hard wood floor and into my tender flesh. I sit up, now painted with blood both my own and not. I know exactly what I will discover when I peer into the broken clock. I can no longer deny to myself that I was the one to shove the mangled remains into the clock's husk, a makeshift casket needed after one argument too many. 

Yet I don't look. I sit there, bleeding to death, staring at the clock's corpse. It does not tick. 

Jacob will be home any minute now. 

**Author's Note:**

> Just one of those times I'm sitting and the first few sentences materialize in my head. I have no idea where those sentences will lead me, but I find myself following the path they make. What I thought was a boyfriend late for a date became the obvious projection of my recent fear of time, inaction, and inevitability.


End file.
